(9) Polar Regions and the Aurora

View from a Spacecraft Looking Down

View from the Ground Looking Up

About the figure:

View from the Ultraviolet Imager on the Polar spacecraft courtesy of G. Parks at University of Washington, J. Spann at Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA. The full auroral sequence (1.1 MB) in available for viewing

About the figure:

A breathtaking view of the aurora courtesy of Jan Curtis. Click on the image for a larger version.

Aurora are a very visible low altitude indicator of magnetic disturbances in near-Earth space.